


I Dreamed a Dream

by wanderlustlover



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Community: 1 Million Words, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 21:26:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1137561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You feeling okay?”</p><p>“It’s nothing.” Doris wrinkled her nose, forcing an embarrassed smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Dreamed a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> **1 Million Words' Rare Pairs Challenge.**   
>  **1 Million Words' Word of the Day: Reticent**   
>  **1 Million Words' Close Your Eyes & You Might Believe**   
>  **1 Million Words' Holiday Challenge: Martin Luther King Jr Day**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Beta'd by SimplyN2Deep

He leans down to kiss her again, skin clammy with the night’s heat, pillow case creases and mouth rough with a night’s stubble, and she wants fiercely not to let go. This once. This one time. Even though he pulls back and she drags a smile out of her spine, feeling like she’s shoving her hand into an ant hill, but looking passable apparently because she sees it mirrored on his lips before he’s pulling away.

“I won’t be able to stay for breakfast. The Rookie has morning processing today.”

Doris nodded, like it didn’t hit some part of her like an all too devastating, even against the tiny voice saying _that was probably better, wasn’t it?_ She didn’t want to think about it. She wouldn’t have on any other morning. She reached up carding fingers through her hair to pull it up.

“Too bad our hoodlums won’t feel the same way, I could catch another twenty minutes of sleep.”

“You were the one who wanted to keep them,” John voice echoed loud from their bathroom, speaking over the spray of the water as the shower turned on.

“I was on a lot of drugs, and they were too adorable when they were all pink faced and squishy.” Doris retorted, pulling the elastic band from her wrist to tie her hair up, feeling both the hard list of the teasing, and the hard pull in her chest of how true it was. “Especially Mary, with all that hair.”

How they’d been everything from the first second she’d seen either of them, through the flush of exhaustion, those two and then three faces. Leaving her staring out the bedroom door a long second, holding her breath like maybe she could hear them sleeping their innocent dreams if she didn’t move.

“Doris.” It’s the second time, she knows it has to be, when she finally snaps her attention back to the door of the bathroom and John is standing there, half amused and half bemused, staring at her close, a little concerned. Those dark stoic eyes, and aborted movements, that hid such a heart of warmth and endless devotion.  “You feeling okay?”

“It’s nothing.” Doris wrinkled her nose, forcing an embarrassed smile.  “I didn’t sleep all that well.”

“Well, try not to pass out while you’re cooking. The five-oh natives never do appreciate it much,” he teased, rough but with affection, while raising a hand to wave back toward the bathroom. “I’ll be down in a bit.”

The last words before the door closed, and Doris took a breath in, feeling the entire rise of her shoulders and that boulder that had filled her chest for the last five days trying to quadruple in size again. _It’s nothing_ , she’d said. Like it was. Like it wasn’t the opposite. Like it wasn’t absolutely everything instead. But what could she have said instead.

_I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you, way back when you first ran into me on the beach, I’m one of the liars in the liars game. A very good one. Too good even. Good enough there are hundreds of people who would pay hundreds of dollars to know just where I’m sitting. That would have for years. And somehow one of them found me. Found us._

But she can’t tell him, or the bathroom door. She can’t tell anyone. They’ve had this conversation a hundred times in the last two weeks. Her and her handler, instead of her and John, or her and John and the kids. The only way to keep them safe and unknown is for ‘Doris’ to vanish. In a way where all that’s left is the casualty of a burned car and not her whole family.

Her life – her _original_ life –was not one for children. Not even for a police officer.

Over the last decade and half, she’d finally started believing it wasn’t for her either. Not anymore.

She could be something else, someone else, someone _free_. Someone called _hun_ , and _mom_ , and _Mrs. McGarrett._ But it was going up in smoke. She’d fought for this week. She’d pushed and she’d shoved, she’d yelled until she was red faced and she couldn’t keep from tearing up, the way her anger always worked, to try any other road and then to have every day she could have until.

It should have been yesterday. That was the plan. But she’d need one more day. She’d begged for it.

But it was morning, again, and she pushed herself off the side of her bed as Steve’s alarm at the end of the hallway started a piercing shriek followed by a – _one, two_ – predictable _thud_ that came muffled through the floor, as her son knocked his alarm clock off his bed table without managing to hit snooze first like he did most mornings.

Doris shook her head, lips curling in a smile despite the sharp pain, of wanting to hear even that a million more times, headed down the stairs toward the kitchen. This house. She would miss everything about. The creaking, old beauty that had held everything. That she patted the door frame of walking into the kitchen, like she needed to touch it, to tell it, somehow without words she was trusting them to it, now. Because she had no choice.

Because that’s one of the biggest things in the lies that weren’t ever lies. She loved them all.

She’d let herself close her eyes. She’d let herself believe. Let herself dream a different dream too long.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all enjoyed this. This was potentially the most challenging piece I've written for **1 Million Words** so far. As the world knows there is not love lost between myself and the Doris who showed up on the screen in Season 3, but this showed up in my head and I hope I did it, and the challenges that seemed to fit it, and especially the end of that beautiful unknowing world, justice.


End file.
